I'm not urging that the government mandate any more absurd mileage
requirements for cars, or ration gasoline, or any other absurd proposals.
Hybrids are great, for the things they're great for. But even hybrids still burn
gas, and if we could drive less, then hybrids would save even more gasoline.

In fact, all that I want government to do, locally and at higher levels, is to stop
with the regulations that force us to use cars for everything, and replace them
with regulations that permit us to walk or bike.

Right now, in most locations zoning laws force developers to create
neighborhoods with houses of about the same size and cost, on roughly the
same size lot, while forbidding any retail within walking distance.

Meanwhile, those same laws generally forbid the construction of new
neighborhoods that mix income levels, house sizes, and densities.

(In Greensboro, we do have mixed-use zones that permit some aspects of a
walking neighborhood, but it is only used in specific new developments, not for
regions of the city large enough to make a difference. Most of the city is still
zoned in the old way.)

It's as if government looked at the beloved old neighborhoods that people drive
through with yearning and nostalgia, and banned them.

The result is that the poor are shunted off into isolated islands, where crime
thrives, employment is remote, and the poor have to own cars just to get a job.
Meanwhile, most people can't walk or bike to any useful destination, because
the law has forbidden retail or office buildings anywhere near where people live.

I have no problem with allowing people to continue to live in pedestrian-hostile
neighborhoods, if they want to. I just want the law to allow the construction
and adaptation of low-car-use neighborhoods.

That means allowing low-parking retail to be built close to new and existing
residential neighborhoods, like the old-fashioned "Main Street" town, where a
commercial strip leads immediately to residential side streets.

In a town the size of Greensboro, this doesn't mean one downtown that gets all
the money and attention. It means dozens of little "downtowns" so that all the
residential neighborhoods can be within easy walking distance of vital retail.

Sidewalks

It also means sidewalks everywhere, on both sides of the street, wide enough
for pedestrians, strollers, and bicycles to share the space.

It also means a mandate for what should have been required all along: The
sharing of parking and easy pedestrian access between all retail centers.

The shopping center at North Elm and Pisgah Church is a perfect example of
the hostility to pedestrians that must be reversed. There is no safe pedestrian
access from the parking area to the sidewalks along the street. That means
that they almost forbid you to walk into or out of their property. Government
must forbid that kind of "islanding."

But because the same builder created the new (and mixed-use!) development
growing next door, the parking lots connect thoroughly, with sidewalks. This is
the model that should be, not just encouraged, but required, to break down the
walls between retail centers.

Meanwhile, our city should be ashamed of intersections like North Elm and
Pisgah Church, where sidewalks are only intermittent, and two directions
across the street have no crosswalks, and there are no crossing signals.

And yet this intersection has been worked on twice at great expense to
"improve" the way it handles cars. Nothing for the pedestrian, everything for
the automobile. This mindset in government has got to go.

And it will disappear, as soon as voters make it clear we're fed up with
pedestrian-hating streets.

Subsidized Public Transit

I don't know why this idea makes some people go so crazy. Many insist that
public transportation has to pay its own way, right from the start. They do
studies showing how many riders we have and take that as an indicator of how
many potential riders there are.

They raise prices or cut routes when there's no profit, even though anyone with
half a brain could figure out that if you cut routes and raise prices you'll have
fewer riders. Because the reason people don't ride buses is: The buses don't go
where they need to get; the buses don't come often enough; and the fare is too
high to afford.

In Greensboro, public transit runs at a loss, but it does run, and with federal
subsidies. Because students at participating colleges ride for free, ridership is
up substantially. These are good things.

Recently, the city council faced the choice: Improve to 30-minute service from
every-hour service and raise rates, or keep rates where they are and maintain
the one-hour rate. Nobody says: If we spend the money to improve the service,
eventually more people will ride because the service will be more convenient;
instead, it is treated as a zero-sum game. This is how transit systems fail.

(Don't include the SCAT rate rise in this, please; SCAT is a noble idea, but it is
not gasoline-saving public transit.)

How many years did Amazon.com run at a loss, living off of its investors, until
it finally began to break even? Amazon had to take the time to raise awareness
of what they offered, develop a clientele that gradually learned to turn to
Amazon first, and, in the meantime, constantly figure out ways to upgrade the
service so that people felt it was worth the cost.

Why can't we recognize that until we invest enough in public transit for it to be
a credible alternative to automobiles, and convince people of this, it will always
be the transportation medium of people who have no choice.

When I'm in New York, I ride the subway all the time. In Paris, I'm on the
Metro; in London, I ride the Underground. When I was in São Paulo and
Ribeirão Preto, I lived on buses. I also walked constantly. I wouldn't have a
car in those cities because there's no reason to.

But the opponents of public transit answer with the nonsequitur: "Of course
they have a great subway or bus system -- look at all the riders they have!"

No! No! It works the other way! They have all those riders because their
public transit is so good (and the parking and traffic so bad) that you'd be crazy
to drive yourself anywhere.

Now, our Greensboro traffic planners do understand about making traffic
worse to discourage people from driving. They also understand that if you
build roads into undeveloped areas at public expense, the tax revenues can
increase from the increased commerce -- that's what the Wendover area
development was all about.

They can spend the money to build huge new roads into vast box-store
complexes with zero residential space -- a traffic nightmare and, I might add, a
hideous place to drive, park, and shop. But they cannot see that to double the
frequency of the buses might also have a beneficial effect on commerce and
quality of life.

Make walking, biking, and public transportation convenient and easy and safe
and cheap, and people will do more of it, to the benefit of us all.

I saw it in Utah. When I lived in Orem, I was commuting every day to Salt Lake
City -- 45 miles each way. I carpooled, but what I wanted to do was take the
bus or train. In those days, though, the enemies of public transit ruled, so
there were only a couple of buses each day, operating at ridiculous times -- not
commuter buses, but destination buses. They wouldn't take you there and
back again in the same day, with time for a day job in between.

But a few years after I left, someone with a working brain redesigned the whole
Utah Transit Authority to make it a viable choice for workers and shoppers,
and to link together all the cities in the great metropolitan area. Buses and
light rail go almost everywhere. Perfect? Not yet -- but better. Usable.

I hear rumors about the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation. I
understand they're looking at light rail. They are financed by a tax on rental
cars. This puts a ceiling on their funding that will make it hard for them to
install a system that will be extensive enough to make a difference.

I know that government scrambles to find money to fund desirable goals. But
let's admit something: Highways and streets are financed routinely, because
everyone knows that they "pay for themselves" in the long run. Nobody seems
to recognize that public transportation (with protection for walkers and bikers)
does so too.

So you can always find money to build "needed" roads, but anyone trying to
fund the infinitely more desirable and sustainable public transit is always
treated as a beggar.

Instead of choosing between higher fares and more-frequent buses, we should
be aiming for a higher goal: We need to run in-city buses often enough that you
know that on key routes you can show up any time and never wait more than
fifteen minutes.

Expensive? Of course. But how many rider-miles would it take before we start
saving the lives of teenage drivers or family breadwinners who aren't driving
cars? How long before the money saved by leaving cars at home turns into an
increase in retail sales?

And you who scream about increasing subsidies, think of this: A bus system
that lets more of the working poor get to better paying jobs is a lot more
worthwhile than subsidies for rich corporations.

Eventually, subsidies for public transit to bring it up to a competitive level of
quality will save us the huge amounts of money we currently pay to support
needless cars. And our lives will be better, once we reach these goals:

Local transit inside the city. Buses will be frequent, regular, clean,
comfortable, safe, and quick. They go everywhere, from everywhere, and if a
hub system is used, there are many hubs, not just one, so that each trip
doesn't take half the day.

The goal should be that you can get to anywhere from anywhere in the city
within fifteen minutes of how long it used to take you to go by car.

We need buses or streetcars that have room for shopping bags under visual
supervision or checked. Cellphone use on buses should be encouraged -- they
aren't libraries or restaurants, they're part of the working day.

Commuter transit. Analyze the workplaces and make sure that major
destinations are well served, so that workers can get to and from work by bus,
never needing to park, even if they stay a little late sometimes. The bus system
can work with major employers to set up collector points, and even offer
minibus service, by contract, for certain locations.

Intercity transit. We can't fly from Greensboro to Winston. What we need is
a solid, regular, dependable train line with commuter, mid-day, and late-night
runs among the major cities. They must have safe, convenient luggage
placement, electric outlets everywhere, small tables for laptops, and reliable
internet access so they can be an extension of the office.

Telecommuting. Businesses should get substantial tax breaks for every day
that fulltime employees stay at home, working by computer. Control-freak
managers hate telecommuting, but in professions where working on a home
computer is possible, the best employees thrive best when they are not
constantly supervised (especially since they are often supervised by people who
know less than they do about their jobs).

The system I'm describing works splendidly everywhere that it is actually tried.
It's expensive, of course -- but New York only has its great subway system
today because somebody spent the money to build it and then maintain it.

Neighborhood Stores

Mixed-use neighborhoods need grocery stores or they will not work.

The trouble is, with cars ruling our lives, the giant supergroceries make us
drive farther and farther because they offer a better selection at a competitive
price. Nobody wants to return to the tiny corner grocery.

We don't have to. We already have all the pieces in place for a new retail
model that will affect, not just grocery stores, but most retail outlets.

Computers make it possible.

At the moment, grocery stores are doing almost nothing with the data they
collect using their frequent shopper cards. They know which stores we shop at
and what we buy. But they still don't use that information to tailor their
grocery stores to fit the neighborhood and the shoppers.

Idiotically, they still make decisions about what to stock based on the big
numbers, as if they were still doing their figures on paper with quill pens. They
could develop just-enough stocking practices that would allow small
neighborhood stores to stock only what they actually sell to regular customers,
plus a little more of the most popular items for walk-in trade.

They could make special-ordering quick and easy, using the internet, so that
customers can get extra quantities for special occasions. The profitable corner
grocery is easily within our reach.

In fact, we could have grocery stores every few blocks -- competing on quality
of tailored service as well as price and selection. Those regular-customer cards
could become memberships or subscriptions that bring the privilege of having
the things you buy regularly always in stock for you.

Regular customers could easily be rewarded for letting the store know when
they'll be out of town so they won't be making their regular purchases. They
would come to think of it as their grocery store, with far higher loyalty.

Grocery stores are the foundation of neighborhood retail. Once they're in
place, you have a neighborhood; until then, you don't. But the corner grocery
model, with just-enough stock management, would quickly be adopted by other
stores.

What we have to remember is that the superstores that kill neighborhood retail
are actually subsidized to a shocking degree because we build roads for them.
They don't have to build into the prices of their goods the tax money we spend
building and maintaining the roads that lead to those stores. Just one more
way government action encourages counterproductive retail.

If we figured into the price of what we buy from them the cost of gas and the
value of the time we spend driving there, they could not compete with chains
that maintain small, walkable local stores with just-enough stock.

With sidewalks, it would be easy to design carts that we could take home; with
membership in the local grocery store, we could have the right to take a mini-cart home and bring it back.

I know, you're thinking, "No way can I fit all my groceries into a cart to take
home." But remember, that's because you hate driving to the grocery so much
that you buy vast quantities of everything all at once so you can avoid taking
more trips (though you still go right back for the stuff you forgot, don't you?)

Neighborhood groceries would be so easy to get to that we would make more
visits and buy less each time.

Besides, neighborhood stores make delivery practical again. It would be a
great job for some of those teenagers who aren't getting killed in cars anymore;
their wages would be paid for out of the money saved by not having to
overstock all the most popular items, and out of the lower cost of operating a
smaller store compared to the amount of stock flowing through it.

Even stores like Home Depot and WalMart can adopt a neighborhood model.
Well-designed online catalogues that allow you to place orders that are
delivered to your local store are a step in the right direction. Large items would
be delivered directly to your home, but not from some faraway location.
Because as the neighborhood shops take away traffic from the big box stores,
they will evolve into the shipping points for local deliveries.

Meanwhile, with small stores taking up little street frontage (and banks
completely banned from taking up street space), the groceries and mini-WalMarts and mini-Macy's, with their just-enough computerized stock
management, will still serve as "anchors" to draw people out onto the retail
streets where tiny shops will have a chance to thrive without paying the
ridiculous, unfair premiums that they currently pay to get space at the mall.

You did know about that, right? The little shops in the mall pay far higher
rent, per square foot, than the big anchors. That's because, presumably, the
big anchor stores draw the customers that also feed the small shops.

So right now the little guy is paying the big guy's bills. In our mini-downtowns,
though, the big stores won't need subsidies to attract them. They'll locate their
small stores in every neighborhood retail center because that's where the
customers are.

It will actually reverse the flow of business -- people will love to shop because
of all the small stores, the way small unique shops drew people to Georgetown
and the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. But government will have to
strictly limit street frontage for any one store -- it's a disaster when a small
neighborhood gets popular (because of the quirky little guys) and then The Gap
and The Limited come in and replace six interesting stores with one big stupid
store that looks like all the others.

The more big stores (and banks) taking up huge street frontage, the farther
people have to walk to get from store to store, and the less they have to look at
while they're walking.

That's why those zoning laws will be used to help us instead of kill us: Banks
will be forced to maintain tiny street frontage and keep their operations in the
back of the building, renting out the front spaces to small shops that keep the
street lively and interesting.

In addition, all those little shops will have commercial space one flight up --
offices and so on -- and residential on the two floors above that. People will
live downtown in housing that ranges from inexpensive to luxurious. It's the
retail that makes it desirable and affordable; and it's the residents right there
who make the shops, especially the small-footprint grocery stores, viable.

Government will nurture these walkable downtowns and retail-centered
neighborhoods exactly the way it currently nurtures the pave-everything big
box stores that suck so many hours out of our lives driving to them.

Public Pride

Here's what drives the whole changeover: We have to want it. We have to know
what's possible, believe in it, and insist on it.

Companies can have odometer competitions -- bonuses for people whose cars
show the least use each week.

We pedestrians must develop camaraderie among ourselves the way bicycle
riders have had to. Lobby for the sidewalks, crosswalks, crossing lights, and
access points we need to be able to live on foot instead of in the car!

We should refuse to show excitement about other people's new cars, unless
they're hybrids. We should honor instead the family that decides to get by with
fewer vehicles.

Instead of cursing bike riders and pedestrians who dare to slow down our cars,
we should be ashamed that we're in the car while they're using muscle power
that doesn't kill anybody or subsidize our enemies or use up the world's limited
oil supply.

A drastic change in public values is essential. Politicians do not lead -- we
know that. So we have to lead.

This begins with a change in the mindsets of people who bought into the old
lies. They now own houses in "exclusive" neighborhoods, or believe that letting
retail be built near their neighborhood will hurt the resale value of their homes.
The opposite is true -- retail values rise as the neighborhood becomes a more
convenient place to live -- but it's hard to get bad ideas drummed back out of
people's heads.

So I doubt anyone will succeed in getting retail moved close to Irving Park.

Yet where I live, on Willoughby, there is a huge office park within a half-mile
walk of my front door, and within a block of many other people's houses. Its
construction did not bring my neighborhood's value crashing down.

I only wish that it had included lots of small retail and homes above shops. I'm
glad that it did include a pedestrian path that many people in the
neighborhood use often.

We are not talking about putting retail next door to you. We are talking about
putting it along main roads that few houses face anyway (if they can help it).

My cousin in Los Angeles, in whose house I often stay for days or weeks at a
time, lives a couple of very short blocks from Pico, an intense commercial
street, and a bit farther from grocery stores on Olympic. I walk on many of my
errands, leaving my rental car parked in front of his house.

I even run to the gym I use in LA, just as I run or bike to the gym I belong to in
Greensboro. I'm close to everything, and I use my car only to get to business
meetings and fine restaurants.

Yet his street, and all the streets in the neighborhood, which run straight and
cross mostly at right angles, are quiet havens for pedestrians, bicyclists, and
playing children. It's a wonderful way to lay out a neighborhood; it's a lovely
way to live.

I know there are people whose minds you can never change; but there are
many who, like me, would love to have retail located conveniently near, and
who understand that this would make the value of our current homes go up.

We must demand changes in the laws so that existing buildings are required to
create pedestrian access and safe bicycle parking.

We must reward box stores with huge empty parking lots for placing small-shop buildings on their street fronts, with residential spaces upstairs. Right
now our laws forbid any such thing. Why do we citizens tolerate those laws?

And we should loudly protest the building of any more standalone box stores
with no vertical development -- you can't put in another box store unless they
have multiple storefronts rented out along the curb and office and residential
spaces upstairs.

Even though some small movements have been made by our local government
to permit a tiny bit of repatterning, what is needed is a much larger scale
change so that existing neighborhoods can be retrofitted with through (but
slow) streets and close-by retail.

Our existing laws and development patterns have forced us to risk and/or
waste our lives in cars; let's get together, as citizens of a democracy, and
demand that the laws change to allow us to get out of our cars except for the
rare occasions when it really would be a pleasure to drive.

And the public goal, the one that we are all striving for and willing, for a while
at least, to sacrifice for, should be this: By 2027, let us cut the number of
miles driven by automobiles in half.

We start by refusing to vote for any candidate who isn't committed to changing
local laws until they support that goal. There isn't a segment of society that
would not benefit from these changes -- including even the people who
absolutely refuse to give up their suburban car-centered life.

Because when the rest of us are walking around in convenient pedestrian
neighborhoods, they'll have the roads to themselves. They just won't have
anywhere to go, or a place to park when they get there, when the subsidies for
gas-burners are gone.

Meanwhile, our enemies will sit around wondering why they don't have all that
extra money to build bombs with, and why the world no longer trembles
whenever they fiddle with oil prices.

 Many people have asked OSC where they can get the facts behind the rhetoric about the war. A good starting place is: "Who Is Lying About Iraq?" by Norman Podhoretz, who takes on the "Bush Lied, People Died" slogan.